


Tied to a Night (They Never Met)

by margosfairyeye (Skittery)



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Canon Compliant, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Miscommunication, Resolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Emotional Tension, except WAY more feelings, kind of, season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 21:08:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18725029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skittery/pseuds/margosfairyeye
Summary: He wasn’t sure which of his senses came catapulting to awareness first, or if they all did simultaneously, like an explosion of sensation.  He could feel the bed shifting slightly every few seconds, the heat next to him slipping millimeters away before returning to his side; someone’s hand was resting across his hip, dangerously close to the edge of the sheet (which was definitely some kind of fancy satin material); his throat felt dry and hoarse, like he’d been talking too loudly; his fingertips were buzzing, as if he’d just done some heavy magic; and the air smelled like sex, and wine, and...Eliot.— —After the threesome in Season 1, Eliot and Quentin try to deal with their feelings.





	Tied to a Night (They Never Met)

The first thing Quentin realized was that he wasn’t waking up where he was supposed to be; the sheet wrapped around him was way too soft, and the bed around him was far too warm, the air hung with the kind of stillness that put him on edge.Over the years, Quentin had developed a strong and sensible response to waking up with a weird feeling of danger: he kept his eyes closed as long as possible and pretended he was still asleep.And while he fought the panicky desire to wake the hell up, he started to remember where he was. 

He wasn’t sure which of his senses came catapulting to awareness first, or if they all did simultaneously, like an explosion of sensation.  He could feel the bed shifting slightly every few seconds, the heat next to him slipping millimeters away before returning to his side; someone’s hand was resting across his hip, dangerously close to the edge of the sheet (which was definitely some kind of fancy satin material); his throat felt dry and hoarse, like he’d been talking too loudly; his fingertips were buzzing, as if he’d just done some heavy magic; and the air smelled like sex, and wine, and...Eliot.  

Quentin’s whole body started to tingle as he remembered where he was, the buzzing spreading from his fingers to every part of him, slowly enough that he could feel each part of him light up sequentially, like in high school when they’d had to line up and touch one of those static electricity balls.Quentin liked the tingles, because they were different, and because he felt them fully, unmuted, in his skin and in his brain and in other parts he was slightly more embarrassed about. 

The leg pressed against his tensed away and then relaxed, pushing harder into Quentin’s thigh in a way that was entirely too erotic to be accidental, and which made tiny sparks explode in front of his closed eyes.Quentin wanted to stay in this moment, listening to the echoes in his brain of sighs and moans and bedsprings and emotions; he wanted to reach out with his hand, which was lying uselessly against his side, and grab onto the hand across his thigh, to remove the barrier of the sheet and endlessly press skin against skin.Quentin wished he had a coin, or something, to worry in his hand, to send some of his energy out into the world, to calm his frantic nerves.Alice kept telling him he needed a fidget ring or something and... _Fuck. Alice._

Quentin let out a breath that was somewhere between a sigh and hyperventilating; his mind was racing to catalogue the possible endings to this entire scenario, and it wasn’t hard to find the most likely ones - they collected over him like rain suspended on an awning over the street until it, well, isn’t.Quentin didn’t want to hurt anyone, hated the idea that he might hurt anyone; for not the first time, Quentin wished he had Penny’s abilities, and he could just blip himself right out of the awkward, messy part, and into a chair downstairs—except for the fact that the idea of showing up out of thin air naked on a lounge chair would honestly probably be worse. 

Next to him, Eliot sighed in his sleep, and Quentin’s brain had a mini explosion again before he realized he could hear someone else breathing, too; quieter than Eliot’s sighs and Margo’s slight snoring, but definitely there.Quentin couldn’t smell Alice anymore, but he knew it was her breathing, just like he knew she was the presence that had woken him up with his defenses up, like he knew that when he saw her, she would be staring at him with her eyes like daggers and disappointment.There was no more time left to stay in the moment; like ripping off a bandaid, Quentin opened his eyes. 

Quentin’s eyes flitted around the room, following the panic arc of his mind that still wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t dreamed all of it, wasn’t still dreaming; he felt like a ghost, like he’d left his body in the bed and was just a bundle of panic and arousal and regret and not-regret.He focused for split-seconds on the ceiling, and the slightly dramatic bed frame behind his head that couldn’t belong to anyone else, and the sunlight coming in through the window, and Eliot’s hand so close to Quentin’s skin and (fuck stop, no, don’t focus on that) and Margo’s hair lying across her pillow ethereally (wait, no, not better); until he finally had nowhere else to look but helplessly up at Alice, who was anger and wrath and rage and hurt and despair and loss and beauty and disappointment. 

Seeing her look at him like that broke every imagined scenario Quentin had thought up, and he crashed back into himself; he wasn’t a ghost or a fantasy anymore, he was just Quentin, lying in a bed he’d barely imagined and breathing in the scents of too many people and watching Alice turn away from the sight of them.Quentin wanted to reach out for her and tell her he was sorry; he wanted to wake Margo and Eliot and tell them he wasn’t; he wanted to pull Eliot closer to him and stay that way; he wanted...

Quentin dropped his head back against the pillow.He was so completely fucked.

— —

Eliot poured himself a drink, watching the liquid spill between the bottle and the glass, letting himself be immersed in the flowing liquid, focusing just hard enough so he didn’t have to focus on anything else, anything running deeper through his own mind.He supposed (knew, really) that Quentin was off somewhere pouting, or arguing, or running his hands anxiously through his hair; Eliot didn’t pout, and he didn’t use his breath to care, and he certainly didn’t muss up his hair over nothing.Because it was exactly that—nothing—and the only thing Eliot needed now was a strong drink. 

He scooped up the glass and settled himself languidly onto a couch tucked into a corner of the cottage.Eliot felt tired, and invigorated, and (if he was honest with himself, which he tended not to be, as the truth was almost always less pleasant than a rosy imagined replacement) confused.Not about what had happened the night before; Eliot drank more than enough on a regular basis to make it more or less impossible for him to black out, even if magic was involved.No, he remembered; his lips tingled from prolonged kisses, and he could feel the ache in his thighs from when he’d straddled Quentin’s hips, the latter’s bones digging into him, the pain disappearing under the pleasure and now asserting itself so that he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about it, the heat and the flesh and the thing sitting underneath it all in his stomach that made it seem so real.It was like Eliot usually replayed scenes from his trysts in black and white, and this one was almost in color.

Eliot sipped his drink and listened to the argument floating around the cottage.He couldn’t blame them for being angry, entirely, although he thought it was pretty much just a waste of time and energy not to mention everyone else’s energy that was getting sucked into the confrontation (when everyone has magic, that’s just part of the game); except actually, he could blame them because if they were all about to die anyway, what exactly was the point of unnecessary childish drama.Eliot didn’t dislike Alice, per se, because he hadn’t thought about her enough to put forth the energy, but she seemed to him like a purveyor of unnecessary drama—it came to a peak and then never dissipated, no payoff, no release.Unlike him and Margo—they were the high art of drama.Nothing mattered, and everything mattered, and they’d put on a damn good show.Eliot had showmanship, if nothing else.

Well, showmanship and the residual feeling of Quentin’s lips pressing against his, of touching skin and pressing his own lips to Quentin’s neck like he’d been wanting to do since the day Quentin walked irritatingly into his life.Eliot had woken up with Margo before, that’s just how their relationship worked, but this was the first time he’d woken up with his arms still stretched around someone, like he actually wanted to keep them there—not that it really meant anything.

He’d felt the heat coming off of Quentin and wondered if he was going to reach out for him, or knock his hand away, or do nothing at all and they could just lie there until Margo woke up, too.And then he’d heard Alice’s breathing, and it had all gone to shit.Not that Eliot cared; all gone to shit, world potentially ending, whatever else was coming to bite him in the ass today, it was all in a day’s work.Eliot would drink his drink, and smooth his clothing, and bitch to Margo for a few minutes and that would be it.He didn’t care because he was Eliot, and he was strong, and he was stone instead of glass.

“You look like hell,” Margo pushed him thankfully out of his thoughts, coming over and tucking herself against him on the couch, nursing her own glass of numbing the soul.  

Eliot frowned at her, then raised his lips into a smirk.“I look great, Bambi, and so do you.” 

Margo had the decency to at least fake a returning smile and clink her glass with his.Eliot could feel the resonance of the glasses.Above them, a door slammed.Again.“Guess the little first years aren’t having as good a time as we are.”Eliot shrugged.“But hey, at least you banged your baby crush, so now we can move on from that.”

“Yeah.”Eliot’s mind wandered again, to Quentin’s skin, and the sharp moans that had escaped him, pressing himself against Eliot, clutching him like a precious thing, something with value.It swept over him like a wave, dragging him into the feel of the moments, of the moments before, and during, and after; of the moment when Quentin first kissed him and for a second Eliot was concerned that they might be floating above the ground, and then crashing down into each other.Eliot’s mind wandered and he took another sip of his drink and grounded himself and shook the memories away, even though he knew that wasn’t really possible, not permanently, at least.“Moving on.”

— —

Margo woke up feeling great, and why shouldn’t she.She was nobody’s mother, and nobody’s girlfriend, and nobody’s bitch, except her own.Alice and Quentin were somewhere, slamming doors, and Eliot looked like he was biting back a feeling he thought no one could see, but Margo was pouring herself a drink and looking like a fucking queen and using the sex glow to fuel whatever came next.

Except it was getting hard for her to ignore how completely forlorn Eliot was acting.She knew he’d been through a lot lately, and they were all under the pressure of having to figure out how to save the world quickly or they’d all be dead, but Margo still had enough strength to put on her lipstick and face the world like the queen she was, and she was getting concerned that Eliot didn’t.Or wouldn’t, if something didn’t change.He kept telling her he was fine, but that was little-kid bullshit, and she could see right through it. 

Margo had hoped that the sex would have bolstered Eliot, since she knew he had a crush on Quentin anyway, and what better way to work out incredibly concentrated emotional turmoil than to bang it out?But she wasn’t sure it hadn’t just intensified the dark, sad look hiding behind Eliot’s normally shining eyes.Plus, he was drinking differently recently; they’d always drank like fish, but they were like those fun fish with the iridescent scales.Now Eliot looked like he was in danger of drowning.

Maybe saving the world would cheer him up.Maybe Quentin was fighting with Alice because he’d realized no one would never live up to Margo and Eliot in bed (which was certainly true, but Margo doubted Quentin was capable of figuring out that the previous night hadn’t just been an emotion magic accident, and she wasn’t sure that Quentin would accept the feelings she suspected Eliot was having unless Quentin discovered them on his own.Boys were exhausting sometimes).

No, Margo knew better than to rely on outside forces; she would stick with Eliot and find a way to help him through whatever herself, because that’s what they did.They were Margo-and-Eliot, for fuck’s sake.So Margo sat down next to Eliot with her own drink and kept one eye on him and bit down her worry and tried to remind him that no one was more fabulous than they were, together. 

 — —

Quentin slammed the door as he left the cottage and wandered out into the incongruently sunny and bright day.How the fuck did Brakebills always manage to look so rosy and golden even when it was under imminent attack; somehow it only made Quentin feel worse.He’d meant to slam the door harder than he had, but the brightness of the day had taken some of the anger out of him, because it didn’t fit or make sense, not that anything seemed to anymore anyway.Quentin was angry: he was angry with himself, for fucking it all up (not that it was entirely his own mess anymore); he was angry with Alice, for not understanding and pretending she was better than him when she wasn’t; he was angry with Margo, for being so fucking fine with everything; he was angry with Eliot for not caring even though the guilt and the buried heat was eating away at Quentin; and he was even angry with Penny, for just being his normal asshole self. 

Quentin had wanted to get outside, away from something, or anything, but once he was actually out he realized he had no idea where he was heading or whether he even actually wanted to leave the cottage.He had absently slipped a deck of cards into his pocket before crashing into the garden, and he slid them out into his hands, going through motions he knew like the back of his hand, things that were supposed to be comforting except that he was angry and frustrated and his thoughts were splitting apart into tiny fragments and shards and in a moment the cards were flying out of his hands and into the air like a scream, creating some annoying pattern he was too scattered to even parse.Quentin stared the cards down, panting heavily even though he’d barely moved.

“Nice trick.” Eliot’s voice came floating toward Quentin, startling him so that all the cards fell to the grass with an unsatisfyingly quiet rustle. 

Eliot was lying sprawled across a lawn chair, almost entirely hidden from Quentin’s view near the door, although to be completely honest he had just assumed no one else was out here without looking around him at all; spatial awareness was not Quentin’s strong suit. 

“Oh,” Quentin said, because he couldn’t think of anything else and because his words were already starting to stick in his throat and because he wasn’t sure if he wanted to yell at Eliot or if he wanted to jump him or if he just wanted a fucking drink.He bent down uncomfortably and started quickly gathering cards, wondering if there was a more magical way of playing 52 card pickup with himself. “Um—hey—um are you...?” He trailed off, realizing he actually didn’t have anything to say, or maybe he had way too many things to say, and it all came out as the same stuttering nothing.

“Shouldn’t you be making up with your smart, angry girlfriend?” Eliot asked, taking a sip from the flask he was holding.He had clearly been drinking all day, but Eliot never seemed drunk, except for, well, last night when he had and when...Quentin shook his head to clear the thought.Eliot was staring at Quentin intently, or possibly staring right through him, and Quentin couldn’t decide which option was worse.

Quentin brushed back his hair absently where it hung in his face as he searched the grass for his cards.“I um, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”Quentin felt unmoored; he wanted to go back to the way things were before last night had happened, back to danger and battle magic and no emotions and sex with someone whose opinion of him he felt slightly more certain of.Except going back in time wasn’t really a thing, and they had bigger things to think about.

“Oh, well, there might not be a tomorrow anyway,” Eliot’s voice still resounded with apathy, but it seemed to be drifting closer to Quentin, and when Quentin looked up from the grass, clutching one of the four queens, Eliot was standing right above him, definitely looking down at Quentin, although his eyes were somewhat glazed over and he seemed unsure himself about why he’d even gotten up.Eliot did a quick series of motions and the remaining cards collected themselves into a pile next to Quentin’s leg.It might have been a coincidence, but Quentin realized it was the same leg that Eliot had been pressed up against earlier that day.He quickly cleared his throat and slid the pile of cards into his pocket; Eliot held out a hand and Quentin briefly took it, allowing Eliot to pull him to his feet before tearing his hand away.

“Thanks,” Quentin muttered.His hand felt unusually warm, as did the cards in his pocket, and the buzzing that had filled him earlier that morning was returning in a muted way, creeping back into his consciousness.Quentin wasn’t overly fond of anything that crept, including his feelings.He stared at the grass, even though nothing was there anymore, just the more acceptable outdoor version of staring at his feet; he felt strange meeting Eliot’s gaze, felt stranger for the knowledge that Eliot didn’t care and wasn’t being eaten alive by guilt or regret or not-regret or whatever. 

“Want a drink?” Eliot asked like he already knew the answer, extending the flask out toward Quentin. 

Quentin didn’t honestly know if he did or not; the hangover from the emotion magic was stronger than the buzz he would get from alcohol anyway, and he was already buzzing from anger and lust and...whatever else.He took the flask from Eliot and took a sip.It tasted fancy and strong and pure, like really expensive motor oil, and Quentin was just glad he didn’t look like an ass and cough.

“No fancy cocktails today then?” 

Eliot raised an eyebrow and gave Quentin the kind of half-sincere smile that now left Quentin feeling like he was missing out on the other half of it, the part of Eliot that Eliot didn’t like to show. “It’s more of an uncorrupted liquor kind of a day.” 

Quentin felt challenged by the reply, and it really wasn’t the day to challenge Quentin on anything, especially if you were any single one of the Physical Kids (or that dick Penny).Quentin took another deep drink from the flask and held it back out to Eliot, who had at some point moved significantly closer to Quentin, so that they were only a breath away from each other.Quentin again found himself contending with the urge to either punch or hug him. 

Eliot was looking at him now, really clearly looking at Quentin and not past him, and Quentin felt his anger evaporating, the buzzing getting louder, the memories from the night before hanging between them, even while the other half of his brain was screaming about Alice and everything that was wrong and completely fucked about this situation.Eliot took the flask back, and his fingers dragged briefly over Quentin’s as he did, and Quentin’s vision exploded into tiny sparks for a moment; and then it was over, and they were just standing in the garden a few feet away and Quentin could hear his own breathing and feel Eliot’s breath and all of the space and the lack of space in between.Quentin wanted to grab Eliot’s hand, wanted to eclipse his regret in the warmth of Eliot’s touch, but there wasn’t enough room in his head to actually do it; they were all on a mission, and he still loved Alice, and there were ten thousand reasons why Eliot was probably bad for him, not the least being that Eliot clearly wasn’t interested in reaching out for Quentin’s hand either. 

They stood there for moments, minutes, hours, Quentin wasn’t sure, the thickness of words unspoken hanging between them, with Eliot looking at him like he couldn’t see anything else around them, the golden light of the garden fading away into a dim haze around them that only they were aware of.Quentin could feel his palms start to sweat a little bit, and he hated that he felt like a stupid child when it came to situations where he couldn’t see the solution, couldn’t find the right key, or the right piece to put everything together.Quentin couldn’t hide from what had happened, or how it buzzed within and around him, but he could press it down, he could swallow and take a step back and go back inside and find a nook in the cottage where he could fit and no one else could see him for a moment, and then he could put his emotions into a bottle and travel to Fillory and everything would be okay. 

Quentin started to step away, then hesitated, and he could feel Eliot’s body following his backward, like they were two opposing magnets, like Eliot was going to reach out for him, and grab him, and pull them together, closing the space; Quentin could feel the echo of the last kiss Eliot had given him, and it rang through his nerves like fireworks, like despite everything he wanted it to happen again, wanted to be grasped and pulled and kissed and fucked right here in the garden.Eliot gave Quentin a tiny, more real smile, and then fell back onto his heels, widening the distance, sealing the finality of it all, putting the period at the end of ‘we had sex, and that’s it.’  

Quentin didn’t know how he felt, he didn’t know what he wanted, he didn’t know if he was angry or sad or just scared and overwhelmed by the newness of everything and the looming travels and battles and potential endings to all of it.He let out a shaky breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. 

“Quentin...” Eliot started.

“Don’t,” Quentin cut in, because there was no way he was going to sit and have a rational discussion about anything, and an irrational discussion would probably just end up starting more emotional fires.“We’re going to Fillory, right?It’ll fix everything.”

“Of course it will,” Eliot replied, with an artificial lift to his voice, and even though Quentin knew that Eliot believed in all of it, at least a little bit, the falseness was enough to push him back towards anger, which was more comfortable, because at least Quentin could be angry without anyone else having to be angry at him in return. 

 Quentin nodded and turned away, pulling out his cards and shuffling them back and forth between his hands.It would fix everything because it had to, because right now it was all just completely and royally fucked. Quentin pulled open the door and stepped through.

——

“It’s more of an uncorrupted liquor kind of a day.”

Eliot hadn’t meant to sound so serious, or so glib, but he felt weirdly uncertain about the direction he wanted this conversation to go in.He knew Quentin was angry, and Alice was angry, and it was all a little too high school drama for Eliot, who had come outside to get away from all of this nonsense and wished he could have just slid deeper into a shadow and ignored Quentin when he came outside and started throwing cards around.But Eliot was having an increasingly difficult time ignoring Quentin, which just made everything else a little bit worse. 

Eliot watched Quentin digest his words and tone and take another drink from Eliot’s flask.Eliot wasn’t feeling especially positive today, especially in light of Quentin’s revisionist history, but there was something undeniably arousing about watching Quentin put his mouth on Eliot’s flask.Apparently Eliot had temporarily turned into the kind of repressed person who got off from something as stupid as that, which wasn’t depressing at all.  

Eliot watched Quentin’s face go through a spectrum of emotions before settling on something that Eliot wasn’t sure he could read correctly; Quentin’s eyes seemed to darken slightly, his breathing slowing and then speeding up, like he couldn’t decide if he was calm or excited.Eliot reached out to take back his flask, and he seized a moment to drag his fingers slowly over Quentin’s as they exchanged possession of the flask—it was a move of pure sex, which Eliot had put to extremely good use before in situations where he wasn’t entirely sure of the other party’s intentions—but as Eliot’s fingers touched Quentin’s a slight spark seemed to spread through Eliot, something deeper than sex and rarely touched by anyone except for Margo, and even then Eliot was prepared for when she broke through his outer shells. It startled him, and Eliot pulled his hand away more quickly than he’d intended to.

Even so, the moment hung.It was suffocating and invigorating and terrible and beautiful and Eliot wanted nothing more than to just reach out and push Quentin back against a wall and remind him that emotion magic or not, the previous night wasn’t as much of a mistake as both of them were pretending.But he didn’t. 

He didn’t reach out and he didn’t say anything and it kept him in one piece for the moment.Eliot could feel when the moment started to dissolve, when Quentin resolved to go back inside and talk to Alice, and when this became more about saving the world than giving into whatever the hell was suddenly between them.Quentin took a step back and let out a more ragged breath than Eliot was expecting, and Eliot leaned back onto his heels and gave Quentin what he hoped was a reassuring smile before relaxing back into the stone Eliot he was usually.The one who took no prisoners or shit and threw the best parties and didn’t do feelings unless he knew what was on the other side. 

“Quentin...” Eliot didn’t really know what he was going to say, but for a second he wasn’t sure that mattered.He wasn’t sure that what mattered wasn’t just stopping Quentin from going inside and getting on with his life.

“Don’t,” Quentin cut him off, and Eliot could see that both of them were putting up guards now, which was probably for the best considering what was on the agenda for the day.He murmured something about Fillory fixing everything and Eliot wanted so much to believe him, to believe in magic the way that Quentin did, to believe in Fillory and the future and Eliot’s own ability to reach out for something he actually wanted without feeling like the floor might give way underneath it.

“Of course it will,” Eliot finally replied, because he wasn’t about to tell Quentin that he thought Fillory was probably not going to live up to what Quentin had already imagined, because nothing ever really did unless you made it yourself. 

Quentin turned away and started shuffling his cards, and Eliot breathed out something between relief and desperation.He took another drink, slipping into the calming confines of alcohol, where he felt in control and complete and could numb the warm memories that looking at Quentin created right now.Sometimes things didn’t work out—it didn’t mean they couldn’t save the world, it didn’t mean that when Eliot went back inside, Quentin would keep his back turned, not necessarily.Eliot felt broken, but on the outside he was stone.He had thought, for a second, that Quentin might have been able to break through, to see the glass Eliot instead of the hard facade, but maybe he had been wrong.  

— —

Margo had spent the day watching Eliot, because she was worried.And also exasperated.And also right, whereas everyone else was somehow wrong.Margo had felt a hope blossom inside of her last night, not because she wanted either of them that way usually, but because she had felt like she and Eliot had finally found someone they could get close to; the sex was like a great side effect to discovering that she actually kind of liked Quentin, and maybe trusted him.Except for the part where he was now acting like a tiny baby and Eliot was moping in the garden.

Actually, by the time she felt like he’d had enough space for her to intrude again, Eliot was back to moping indoors, lying on the bed in a position that let him kind of stare at the sheet that had gotten mussed when Quentin hightailed it out of there this morning—because that was totally and completely normal.Margo was pretty sure Eliot was just trying to latch onto the same feelings she was having, only he was having a harder time because letting someone in was not the same as allowing yourself to want them in a purely physical way.Which, hey, they were physical kids after all.

Margo sat on the bed, screwing up the semi-shrine of bedsheets.Eliot gave her a familiar half-smile and pulled her in closer to him, but she felt like maybe this time he was doing it less for the comfort of physicality and more so that she wouldn’t be able to look him directly in the eyes.Margo knew that with the coming battles, talking about their feelings really needed to take a backseat, but she also couldn’t entirely ignore Eliot’s current mood.“El, what’s going on with you?”

Eliot flipped away from her, onto his back, and sighed.“Do you think Fillory can...fix...everything?”

Margo had to force herself to look as nonchalant as usual.Eliot had clearly had enough to drink by now, because that wasn’t a very Eliot question.Usually out of the two of them, Eliot was the first to cut directly to confidence; they worked best when they could feed off of each other’s energy, and lately Eliot wasn’t giving her much to work with. She started to say something sarcastic, and then looked closer at Eliot’s face and realized some part of him was actually, desperately serious.  

“I think I stopped believing in the Fillory shit when I went through puberty,” she paused, waiting to see if he would laugh, trying to figure out what he was actually asking, and then choosing not to answer that question, because it was easier to take it at face value, and because it was just a hangover from the emotion magic.“But I think Quentin knows what he’s talking about.”

Eliot smiled softly at the ceiling, then turned back towards her with his face neatly in place; Eliot the put-together, who was always going to look hotter and talk better than everyone else around him.Margo was honestly a little surprised to see him snap between the two so quickly after spending most of the day moping, but Eliot was surprising her more and more recently; she wasn’t entirely sure she liked it.

Eliot looked up at a noise from downstairs, “Off we go.”

Margo nodded, because sure, who wasn’t excited about putting their emotions in a bottle and going up against some asshole villain with all the battle magic they’d pulled out of their asses over the last few days.The last few hours had been more than enough of everyone else’s emotions for Margo’s tastes.


End file.
